WARNING: Very self-centered and personal reflections ahead. Could very possibly sound like crazy, incoherent ramblings of a two-bit writer-wannabe. I don't capitalize my name for aesthetic purposes. She also switches from first to third-person references on a whim. I apologize.
My favorite quote is by Douglas Adams. I never remember the exact wording, but it is something like I am not where I thought I would be, but I am pretty sure I have ended up where I am supposed to be.
Growing up, I knew that I was safe and a valued member of my small community. However I knew that I couldn't stay, though my reasons changed as I became older. First, it was b/c big cities were foreign and and glamorous. They were where the movie theaters and Fred Meyers were. But being what I considered a somebody in Sandy was the best way that I could cope. Not being the popular, pretty and/or athletic type, I found my niche with theater and community involvement. Being involved with plays and being smart served me well. Not being a target of scorn by my peers (that I was directly aware of) made me comfortable and happy. But I knew that Sandy wasn't going to be my first and only home in life. The small-townieness felt like it was closing in on me, so I planned my escape, as many young people in small towns do.
I left and went to college. I went as far away as I could from Sandy while still paying in-state tuition to SOU. I, however, still clung to that familiarity of home though, longer than I should have. I sheltered myself, resisting the rest of the world, knowing that I should have opened up to it. My high school pictures and memories of those glory days were at the same time a life raft keeping me afloat and an anchor pulling me down. In my mind, I was a somebody in Sandy and hanging on to that idea and that my friends and I would never change prevented me from growing up.
Somehow I realized this during my sophomore year. I wouldn't say I knew it at the time, but leaving my childhood friends and going to a school without really knowing anyone set me on my path to freedom. That was my first step toward becoming jenna.
While my days at UO set me on my path, I still was only going waist-deep into the pool that is the real world. I still strove to find the same comfort and familiarity that I had known, just in a different setting and without curfews. Even my initial reason for joining AmeriCorps a year after I graduated was to be in a team where I could recreate that comfort zone of friends that's I'd grown up with, albeit with new people. That first year was the next wake-up slap in the head.
That first year, I found that I really couldn't be that same jenna from Sandy out in the real world. That jenna was needy, selfish and pretty mean. I couldn't get over my insecurities and made others turn away with my passive/aggressive attitudes. True, there were circumstances that I couldn't avoid or change and some really crap things happened to me emotionally that year, but how I wish I could have handled things differently.
I did get a second chance of sorts my second year of AmeriCorps. Signing up for that second year and being accepted as an STL was my attempt to correct mistakes I had made the first year and make my experiences they way I had initially hoped they would be. I still felt regret and pain from the previous year, but I found love and support from wonderful people too that had been missing before. I opened myself up a bit more to discovering who I am. I started to let myself be me, not who I thought others wanted me to be. That was a year where I started to really learn my lesson that not everyone would like me, but that I could be OK with it.
My final year with AmeriCorps was borne from my yet unfulfilled need to be on my own and to help me discover who jenna was. I picked a city on the opposite side of the country where I only knew one other person in the whole state. My Boston year was a year with the fewest safety nets in my life. I was on my own in a brand new, big city were all my needs and decision had to come from myself. Money became an issue for really the first time in my life, but it was also the first time I became truly accountable only to myself. I was in charge of making my own friends, planning my own social activities, ensuring that my needs for food, shelter and safety were met and figuring out how I was to deal with myself. I had to figure things out on my own.
That year gave me my true freedom. No...I gave myself my true freedom. I learned that I could survive in the world by being me. But it couldn't just be the me that I thought I was or that I thought I should be, but the me that included all my flaws and ugliness. I acknowledged the insecurities and jealousy that I had always had and that they were a part of who I was. Knowing this gave me the freedom I had been seeking. After that, I began to see the love, joy and true spirit of jenna. I could be comfortable and happy with this person.
I cannot take all the credit for these discoveries myself. It fills me with great awe and inspiration to see who the true friends in my life are, including my family. These are people who have seen my ugliness and awfulness but for some reason or another have stuck around. They make me feel deserving of love and happiness. They have always been there for me in their ways and it has taken me far too long to realize that. They give me strength to look at myself deep down. They should know who they are. If they don't, just ask. I'll tell you exactly how you have touched my life and how I will spend the rest of my days trying to repay you for it.
Returning to Oregon was an important homecoming. My traveling spirit sated for the time being, I decided I could move foward in life. Comfortable with my planted roots, I am now able to enjoy this newer, grown-up version that I currently am. I feel that this is the closest that "who I am" and "who I want to be" have matched up to each other. Of course there have been setbacks to this since coming home. They have taught me painful lessons and tried to drag me backward. But setbacks will always be a part of life and they will come and go. With every one that gets in my path, I grow and learn to recover more quickly in order to move on to the good stuff in this life.
As I sit writing this during my favorite activity of loitering at a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon, I am content. Life moves on around me. I still carry those hurts and pains of life and growing up, but every day that I survive, I learn from them. Without them, I couldn't be as happy and at peace with today's jenna. This is a pretty good jenna to be right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment